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Businessmen as folk ethnographers

Lund University, Sweden, david.wasterfors{at}soc.lu.se

Before the rise of professional ethnography, untrained methods to investigate `other' cultures prevailed among various Western actors: travelers, missionaries, colonial administrators, and traders. This article analyzes how such informal ethnography is still treated as an epistemic guide in a post-colonial and transnational business world. A particular case is examined: Swedish and Swedish-Polish businessmen working in emerging markets in Poland and neighboring countries in Eastern Central Europe after the fall of Communism. Situated in what they regard as commercially attractive but relatively unknown cultures, these businessmen oscillate between classic fieldwork and profitable control, pragmatically linking their eagerness for knowledge with their ambition to get things done. The overall vision is a folk version of ethnography, rhetorically celebrated but practically complicated.

Key Words: folk ethnography • culture • rhetoric • business • emerging markets • Eastern Europe

Ethnography, Vol. 9, No. 2, 235-256 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1466138108089469


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